I had a new and wonderful experience this week. Becky Cooper of Western Michigan University's Academically Talented Youth Program (ATYP), which offers advanced programs for high achievement middle and high school students, had me in this week to talk to the classes about writing, research, and best of all, conspiracy theories!

We had great conversations about a lot of stuff, including electric cars - the conspiracy theories and what really happened back in the day. My favorite theory about early electrics is that Henry Ford and John D Rockefeller conspired to kill the electric car in order to buy oil from Saudi Arabia so they could finance Islam with petrodollars. I'm not clear on exactly when this was supposed to have happened, and oil was discovered in what is now Iran in mid-1908, but Henry Ford a Muslim? Really? (Anyway, everyone knows Rockefeller was an alien, and I've never heard of a Muslim alien.)

The class let me judge their tinfoil hat contest (necessary to keep the government from intercepting our thoughts - I've got to get me one of those). But the best part of the day was after class, when one of the girls came up to me and said, "I really liked what you said about doing something that makes you happy, not just makes you money. You might have just changed my life." Gives me goosebumps even now.